


The Breath Before the Phrase

by Joy_in_the_House



Series: One Foot Wrong, and I'm Going to Fall [3]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: Gen, I don't even know how I feel, Major Emotion, Probable medical inaccuracy, medical talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-23 16:47:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21084602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joy_in_the_House/pseuds/Joy_in_the_House
Summary: Picks up from the last one. Something goes wrong, and House picks up the pieces, now facing what happens when Wilson paid for House's sins.





	The Breath Before the Phrase

**Author's Note:**

> For Nia <3

Wilson reached for House, his hand tangling in the black bomber jacket as he kept coughing. Wilson motioned towards the basin desperately.

House passed it to him, holding under the other man’s head as he began to cough something up.

House kept a hand on Wilson’s back, rubbing small circles as Wilson finally raised his head, and House stared in horror at the trickle of blood from his mouth.

Wilson looked up at House in fear before he was choking again, and House pressed the call button. 

“What’s wrong?” Wilson gasped as House sat him up further.

House opened his mouth to respond, and Wilson kept a firm grip on House’s jacket.

“Pulmon….” He gasped out, answering his own question. “Embolism,” he managed to say just before his eyes half closed, and he choked on a breath.

“Wilson!”

Wilson tried to focus on breathing. The pain grew until it was choking him, and he desperately tried to suck in one breath after another. Inhale. Exhale.

Each breath sounded like a wheeze but felt like a burning wash of fire through his chest.

He felt the bed drop, and within an instant he had been laid flat on the surface.

He couldn’t breathe.

There were hands on his face, and he choked again.

“Wilson, you need to get air. I’m putting a mask on you.”

Something heavy landed over his face and he panicked.

“Hang a heparin bolus, 5000 units.” Someone was barking orders above him.

He felt himself being tipped on his side, his hand pinned down, and he forced his eyes open again.

No one had prepared him for the terror of being at the other end of the medical attention.

No one had told him how utterly horrifying it was to be treated and worked over when he knew exactly what was wrong.

He tried to stop himself from watching the others but couldn’t stop.

There was a roaring in his ears.

He sucked in a breath, and as Thirteen moved past to check the IV, he caught her arm feebly.

She turned in surprise and looked down at him.

He stared up at her, his eyes blown open wide, and she gripped his hand.

Someone turned him onto his back and he huffed out a breath, the air crushed from his lungs from even the mild impact.

“Get ready to move him to the ICU,” Thirteen told the others, still holding onto Wilson’s hand.

House watched the team as they worked, having been shoved back to make space.

“You’re okay.” Thirteen squeezed Wilson’s hand, and he squeezed back, one tiny pulse.

Wilson stared at the ceiling, and as everything around him began to move, he let his eyes close again.

“Dr. Wilson, can you hear me?”

Yes, he could.

“Can you hear me?”

Yes.

“Dr. Wilson!”

What do you want?

A weight on his chest and his eyes flew open.

“Dr. Wilson, can you hear me?”

A cracked groan crushed out of him in reply and he squeezed the hand that was holding his.

Something started beeping.

“Going into sinus tach!”

“Check the bolus-”

“He’s not breathing-”

“-another bag of heparin-”

Pain was pain. But terror was something else.

Medically he knew exactly what the problem was. He tried to map out the problem.

He had sustained a spinal injury.

He had furthermore sustained head trauma amounting to a Grade Two concussion and a subdural hematoma.

He was immunocompromised with the sheer amount of medications.

Up until a few hours ago he had been feverish, and he had been sedentary the entire time.

Immobile.

He must have developed a DVT.

Deep Vein Thrombosis, which had broken off and circulated, resulting in a pulmonary embolism.

Heparin, he remembered. Someone had started a heparin bolus. If that wasn’t enough, they would start him on a thrombolytic, a common clot buster.

Wilson was a doctor, but he was a person first.

The coldly clinical part of his brain fizzled out, and the sheer horrifying panic of the ordeal crashed back into him.

He sucked in a breath—

– Only to realise that no air had been inhaled.

Something was making a noise, like a cry.

At no point did it occur to him that perhaps, he was the one crying.

At some point, even the panic stopped.

There was chaos.

The only noise was Foreman barking orders as the bed was pushed past the staff in the hallway; the hushed murmurs as the faculty recognised the patient they were pushing; the crack of ribs as House’s hands rhythmically compressed James Wilson’s already battered chest. The scream of the monitor announcing the lack of a heartbeat. The pants of the team as they transported one of their own to the cardiac intensive care unit. The muttering of House as he quietly bargained with Wilson to come back.

As they passed through the ICU doors, it all fell silent.

House tumbled off the bed where he had been trying to regain a life, practically falling into Chase, who supported him down to the floor. The cane had been lost somewhere along the way. House half-lay on Chase’s lap, eyes nailed to the wall; face blanker than paper. 

Chase was hunched over, hair falling over his eyes.

Foreman was silent, his mouth open, mouth dry.

Taub was staring at nothing in particular, wide-eyed as he connected House’s shock and the sudden silence.

Thirteen’s hand was still wrapped around James’ own until someone pried it from her. She still didn’t move.

No one moved.

They could have been mistaken for statues had their chests not risen and fallen in the simple act of breathing. An act that is under appreciated until it is stolen. They could have been mistaken for statues had their faces not been stained with tears; blotchy with anger; anger at the world for shoving the kindest man any of them had known into a situation such as this. The entire hospital team worked around them, but their noise was lost on the team that mattered most.

One small sound broke the silence, and the others turned to them.

“He couldn’t breathe,” he whispered, the pain in his own leg forgotten.

And the weight of that phrase stole the air from the others, and nothing else mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> Ow ow ow.


End file.
